Table of contents for N. 123 in Topos

Oh, hi there! I’m topos, the leading international magazine for urban planning from Munich, Germany. For me, everything revolves around the sustainable city of the future. Online, I spend 365 days a year dealing with the question: how will we live sustainably, healthily and technologized in the world’s future metropolises? In addition to my home www.toposmagazine.com, I am published four times a year as a print magazine (that’s what you are holding in your hands right now!). I address everyone who is interested in the smarter, greener city of the future and who works in, on and with the city. My readers include CEOs, mayors, architects, landscape architects, urban planners, engineers, digitalization specialists, researchers – simply everyone that is interested in urban development! My great passion is finding and analyzing…

Nusantara is an old Indonesian term referring to the Indonesian archipelago. It is a word from the ancient Javanese language and means something like "between the islands". The term Nusantara is often used to emphasize the cultural and linguistic diversity of the many Indonesian islands, which have a rich history and are home to a wide range of cultures, religions and traditions. In modern times, the term Nusantara is also used to highlight Indonesia’s national identity and unity, and to promote appreciation for the diversity and unity of Indonesian society. Indonesia’s capital Jakarta was founded almost 500 years ago and, with over 10 million inhabitants and more than 30 million people in the metropolitan area, is one of the largest metropolises in the world. But Indonesia’s political, cultural and economic…

International refugee protection is the central work of UNHCR. Since 1950, UNHCR’s mission has been to ensure that the human rights of refugees are respected and upheld. Over the years, numerous other areas of responsibility have been added. For example, the UNHCR acts as the UN Refugee Agency and thus as an international bulwark for the protection of stateless persons and people who have been displaced within their own national borders. In summary, today’s UNHCR is responsible for the protection of refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless persons and returnees worldwide. In addition, the UNHCR’s tasks include finding lasting and sustainable solutions for the issues of integration, resettlement and voluntary return. The so-called League of Nations was the predecessor organisation of the United Nations and started already at the…

Worldwide millions of people find themselves displaced due to climate change. Yet, most do not qualify for “refugee” status and thus do not have the same rights as other refugees. Do you see any progress regarding the status of those facing climate displacement? Displacement related to climate change is a current reality. According to the internal displacement monitoring center (IDMC), 22.3 million people were displaced internally because of weather related events in the year 2022 alone. Scientists from the IPCC confirm that these events – storms, wildfires, floods – are becoming stronger and more commonplace as the climate changes, hence the risk of future displacement is increasing. However, evidence suggests that the vast majority of people move within countries’ borders, as internally displaced persons. For this reason, Refugee status, which…

Refugee immigration has increased sharply since 2022. For the municipalities, this issue is central and the desire for more support from the federal and state governments is great. In May, the refugee summit of the federal and state governments took place. What are the results of the summit? What direction is Germany’s refugee policy taking? And what are politicians saying about it? First of all, figures help us to classify Germany in European and global terms. Where does Germany rank in terms of refugee aid? Many numbers before people In Germany, 1.2 million refugees have arrived since 2014. The war in Ukraine added around one million people. In other words, about 2.2 million refugees have immigrated to Germany since 2014. That is a total of about 2.5 percent of Germany’s…

For the past four years, a special government taskforce in Fiji has been trying to work out how to move the country. The plan it has come up with runs to 130 pages of dense text, interspersed with intricate spider graphs and detailed timelines. The document has an uninspiring title – Standard Operating Procedures for Planned Relocations – but it is the most thorough plan ever devised to tackle one of the most urgent consequences of the climate crisis: how to relocate communities whose homes will soon be, or already are, underwater. The task is huge. Fiji, which lies in the south Pacific, 1,800 miles east of Australia, has more than 300 islands and a population of just under 1 million. Like most of the Pacific, it is starkly susceptible…

Two years ago, the island nation of Tuvalu attracted global attention. At COP 26 in Glasgow its foreign secretary, Simon Kofe, gave a speech in knee-deep seawater and highlighted like this the dramatic situation in his country. It is most likely that within the next 50 to 100 years, the Pacific Island State will become uninhabitable and disappear as a result of climate change. The country has been classified as 'extremely vulnerable' to climate change by the United Nations Development Programme. Tuvalu struggles with five millimeters per year sea level rise, rising temperatures, saltwater intrusion, storm surges, tidal and wave driven flooding, and coastal erosion on its nine coral atolls and islands, the highest of which rises about 15 feet above sea level. In addition, the frequency of cyclones and…

“THE INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT MONITORING CENTRE AIMS TO INFORM IMPORTANT DECISIONS, SHAPE POLICY-MAKING, OFFER ADVICE, AND IM-PROVE THE LIVES OF AS MANY INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE.”Anna Arndt By some common definitions, “internal displacement” refers to the forced movement of people within the country they live in. The demarcation of the term “refugee” is solely based on the crossing of borders: In cases of conflict, violence, or climate change disasters, some people are forced to leave their homes, but cannot or do not cross the border like refugees do. By definition, they also don’t have the same special status in international law as refugees do. But there’s more to the situation than plain definitions: every year millions of people are forced to flee their homes, livelihoods, schools and social networks, and…

Can you tell me more about your work and position? My name is Manuel Marques Pereira. I am the Head of Division for Migration, Environment, Climate Change and Risk Reduction at the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This division brings together the themes of human mobility in the context of climate change, environmental degradation and disasters, and disaster risk reduction. We try to bridge the space between policy and practice that can enable individuals to be safer, informed, and empowered to make decisions about their own mobility. IOM as the mobility agency sees itself as a contributor towards individuals' ability to identify the best options for their mobility. We strongly believe that migration should be a choice and not a necessity and for people to make the right choices, they…

Scientific findings show with great certainty that Europe’s climate will warm faster than the global average. And that’s regardless of how little or – much more likely – how much the Earth’s climate warms overall in the future. It is clear that in the future we will have to expect an increase in extreme weather events worldwide, such as heat waves, floods and rising sea levels. While the full impact of climate change on migration movements is unclear, experts expect a significant increase in climate-related migration in the future. In a 2020 study, the Australian think tank Institute for Economics and Peace concludes that by 2050, more than one billion people worldwide will live in countries that are not adequately prepared for the consequences of ecological events and and that…

We have endured experts and commentators squawking back and forth about the validity of “climate change” and “global warming” on American television sets for decades now. Are the temperatures in fact rising or are these just normal, cyclical fluctuations? Even if we humans are turning up the Earth’s temperature, how can we know our actions are making weather more destructive? Famed conservative opinionator Rush Limbaugh dismissed climate change as “nothing but a bunch of computer models” and that the projections are “way, way, way, way out there” when we will not be “alive to know whether or not they were true.” He said this in 2019, precisely two years before his own death.½ And yet this ongoing “uncertainty” debate has been increasingly interrupted by violent, irrefutable evidence in the form…

Theresa Ramisch studied Urban Planning at the TU Munich. She began working as an editor for G+L and topos in 2016. Since 2021, she has been Editor in Chief for G+L – the leading German magazine for Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning. Since 2023, she has been as well Editor in Chief for topos. t.ramisch@georg-media.de Sam E. Valentine is a landscape architect and researcher. Supported by Harvard University and a Fulbright grant, he is conducting research in Brazil and Angola, collaborating with self-built, informal communities to expand knowledge of resident-driven landscape design processes. samvalentine@gmail.com Francesca Rosignoli is the Maria Zambrano postdoctoral fellow at the University Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. Her current research focuses on the role of gender and justice in climate-induced migration. Her monograph "Environmental Justice for…

Climate change is one of the burning issues at present and no-one is safe from its calamitous effects. Some developing countries like Bangladesh are already experiencing its miscella neous effects, including seeing a significant number of climate migrants around the country. The government of Bangladesh has started planning the city of Mongla in Mongla upazila, Khulna district for these migrants. Mongla city has been chosen as there are large sprawling industries, Export Processing Zones (EPZ) around this area, and because it is the second largest seaport in Bangladesh (approximately 74.2 kilometres inland from Sundarbans). Since the coastal belt of Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to cyclones, storm surges and salinity problems, the nearby city of Mongla can be an excellent option for climate refugees. This city is growing quickly and is…

Mumbai is home to some of the tallest buildings and poorest neighbourhoods in India, with prosperity and poverty side by side throughout its urban fabric. It is a city of marked contrasts: hawkers moving in and out of the Victorian arcades of South Mumbai; a river separating Dharavi’s household enterprises from the business district of BKC; beaches dotted with joggers and vendors; the international airport surrounded by Lego-like houses made of brick and tarpaulin. Along its picturesque coastal setting by the Arabian Sea, heaps of garbage are deposited from the ocean every monsoon and strewn along the length of Marine Drive, a seaside promenade that forms part of the popular imagery of the city. The city of Mumbai grew across seven islands, which served as a centre for trading operations…

What we do know and what we don't – Climate migration occurs when people decide to flee their home countries in the context of climate change and environmental degradation. Environmental disruptions such as desertification, drought, groundwater and soil salinization influence people’s decision to migrate somewhere else either to prevent the worst or to escape from places becoming uninhabitable. Prolonged and severe droughts, for example, trigger serious food shortages likely to threaten millions of people living in the most impacted areas. In 2022, Somalia recorded 43,000 excess deaths due to an unprecedented series of droughts occuring since 2008. Tragically, half of these casualties were children under the age of five. Although the climate crisis is a reality, with ever more frequent extreme weather events jeopardizing the lives of thousands of people,…

Is there a right to safe fleeing or migration? The answer is not clear cut: international law protects from deporting people who fled persecution or other human rights abuses. But while everyone has a right to leave their own country, there is no right under international law to enter another country. In practice, this means that while you are in theory allowed to leave a place where you are in danger, you are not automatically entitled to enter another country, as this is the ultimate decision of that country’s authorities. Only after you have entered another country, whether regularly or not (or you are in any case under the control of another country’s authorities, as in the case of rescues at sea), you cannot be sent back to a place…

Your home nation is the prize you get in the birth lottery; whether you get to grow up in a safe and wealthy state or in a poor and undemocratic state; it’s not up to you, it’s simply a coincidence. In fact, 2.2 billion of the world’s total population of about 7.8 billion people didn’t have access to clean drinking water in 2020, and 1.6 billion live in inadequate housing. Still, a lot has to happen for us to leave our home and maybe even our families to find refuge someplace unfamiliar. Nearly 90 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced due to war, conflict, fear of persecution or human rights violations – and the number increases every year since 2011. Although it’s hard to imagine the circumstances which lead…